Our Stars Scattered Like Dust (11/11)
Title: Our Stars Scattered Like Dust (11/11)
Authors: icedteainthebag and wishflsinfl
Characters/pairings: Adama/Roslin, Kara/Lee, Gaius/Caprica, other assorted affairs, ensemble cast
Rating: MA (graphic sex)
Warnings: AU, Character death
Spoilers: through Daybreak
Summary: As the new bartender on the cruise ship Galactica Bill Adama is hoping for an uneventful first voyage, but his life is irrevocably changed when he meets cruise director Laura Roslin.
A/N: Thanks to everyone who read this story, as crazy as it was, and especially to those who left comments convincing us we weren't (completely) crazy. Thank you to fragrantwoods and somadanne for their invaluable beta assistance. Also thanks to the folks at bsg_checkin for cheerleading.
Chapters: One | Two | Three | Four | Five | Six | Seven | Eight | Nine | Ten | Eleven
*
The helicopter ride to the hospital was a blur for Laura. Too much was happening too quickly; she was still reeling from Cottle's revelation. She barely heard the clamor both times Bill stopped breathing-the shouting, Lee's concern, medical terms and phrases Laura didn't, and didn't want to, understand. All she wanted to hear was his voice.
She ached to touch him, and finally, in the last few minutes before they landed on the mainland, there was a stillness in which she was able to hold his hand.
They'd never held hands before and she didn't let go until someone pulled her hand away.
She thought she must be in shock, drunk on pain, a pain so deep she couldn't feel it--but she knew it was there. Her head light, she followed the medics and Bill, on a gurney, into the hospital. The lights were too bright for eyes so dry.
She was stopped at the entrance to the treatment rooms by someone who kept repeating the same words, trying to get a response.
"Are you immediate family?"
Laura bit down on her lip, tasting a tinge of blood. She felt a hand on her back.
"She's his wife."
She looked over at Cottle, who was glaring at the nurse. "Let's go," he said more gently, taking her arm.
*
Lee paced nervously in the hallway of the ER. Cancer. Was that was his father wanted to talk to him about?
Suddenly all of the things they'd argued about over the years seemed so petty and unimportant. So much lost time …
Lee wiped the tears from his eyes and sniffled, feeling like a child again. He was surprised at the touch of a hand on his elbow.
"Are you okay?"
It was Laura. "Oh, yeah, I guess. I mean, obviously not, but …"
"I know." Her voice was as gentle as the touch of her hand on his arm. "It's a lot to process."
"Yeah." He sniffed again, trying to compose himself.
Laura murmured something reassuring and drifted away. Other people were milling around now, starting to arrive from the ship. He spotted the Tighs, the captain's white uniform stained with evidence of the battle.
Time seemed to pass haphazardly. Too fast and then too slow as he waited for word from the doctors. Finally someone came out to tell him that they were moving his father upstairs to the Medical ICU.
A group of people in hospital garb emerged through the swinging doors, flanking a stretcher. Lee could only see his dad's head. There was an oxygen tube placed below his nose but he was breathing on his own. That was a good sign, he knew.
He was about to follow the stretcher upstairs with Laura when he spotted Kara racing through the halls. She hit him at a dead run, throwing her arms around him and knocking him back several steps.
"I got here as fast as I could," she said, sobbing.
Holding her close, he buried his face in her hair. She smelled like the ocean.
*
Ellen hated hospitals. It was a cliché, she knew, but when you'd died in as many of them as she had, it was a well-earned hatred.
She and Saul found Doc Cottle near the elevator, looking grave.
"Just a matter of time now," he said.
Saul squeezed Ellen's hand. "Does he know?"
"I gave him the short version but I think he knew already. He's been in and out of consciousness."
"I just need a few minutes with him," Ellen said. "I need to say goodbye."
The same nurse who stopped Laura earlier eyed Ellen and Cottle as they approached her.
"Younger sister," Cottle said.
With a roll of her eyes, the nurse issued Ellen a visitor's pass for the MICU.
"You flatter me," Ellen whispered as they rode the elevator up four floors.
The MICU pod was small and circular, allowing Ellen to see into Bill's room as she stepped off the elevator. Laura Roslin was in there with him, sitting next to his bed, all tragedy and lost hope.
Ellen steeled herself for her task and strode into the room like she owned it. "You weren't kidding about going out with a bang."
Bill's eyes fluttered open at the sound of her voice. They looked unfocused. His breathing was shallow and slow. But he managed to raise his hand off the bed a few inches as recognition set in. She set the bag she'd brought him on the chair and took his outstretched fingers in hers and was startled by how cold they were. His fingernails were blue around the edges. Probably the morphine slowing down his circulation.
Standing on the opposite side of the bed, Ellen avoided Laura's teary gaze-the last thing Bill needed was two women crying over him. Again. Instead, she focused on the man who lay in the bed, the man who'd sacrificed his life because she'd asked him to.
His lips moved and she had to bend down to hear what he was trying to say.
"-mission?"
She squeezed his hand gently. "You did it, Bill. Defeated the pirates, protected the assets. You really kicked ass out there today. Made us all proud."
She left out the rest … the massive rescue efforts, the dozens of civilian casualties, the summary dismissal of her entire crew, and the loss of Galactica to Davey Jones's Locker. There were some things a dying man didn't need to know.
Laura looked up at her and smiled tearily, obviously grateful for Ellen's discretion.
"How 'bout you?" Bill whispered.
"Me? You know me. I'll be fine. I've got a job lined up on a Russian icebreaker and they've agreed to take on most of the core crew members. We'll be in Vladivostok by daybreak." With new identities. Again. At least the pirates hadn't blown her secret. It wasn't time for the identities of the five to be revealed in this iteration.
Bill nodded almost imperceptibly. "Kotsov. You know …"
"That bastard. Kiev, right?" She tried to keep it light, keep him from wasting too much energy worrying about her. "If I need anything, I'll look him up. Tell him you said to go frak himself, too. How's that?"
With a weak smile, Bill closed his eyes.
Laura had started crying softly. Obviously she was in love with Bill. Seriously, head-over-heels in love with him. Not one to question love at first sight-she'd been with Saul frakking Tigh for how many centuries now-Ellen knew it was time to take her leave.
She bent down and smoothed Bill's hair back. He was burning up. He'd be lucky to last the night. Pressing a kiss to his forehead, she fought hard against the sob that was threatening to break through her icy captain's demeanor. "Go with the Gods, Bill."
Before he could respond, she turned and fled the room. She didn't want him to see her cry.
Saul was there waiting for her when the elevator opened on the ground floor and she crumpled in his arms, muffling her sobs against the heavy wool of his pea coat.
*
Laura had taken a break from her vigil, leaving Lee to speak what might be his final words with his father while she roamed sterile halls. She didn't want to wait too long before she returned, but knew that Lee deserved to give his father his last respects.
She hadn't given herself time to cope with the idea that Bill had cancer, that he was dying. It seemed to be happening so quickly even though she knew it had probably been happening for years, for plenty of time before she knew him. He'd had time to prepare for this moment, and knowing Bill-as little as she did-he had probably spent ample time preparing.
She was a planner and this was not in her plan. None of it had been-meeting him, falling in love, all the shit that happened afterward.
It seemed that death liked the sneak attack. Every time she encountered it in her life it was by surprise, within an instant taking away the ones she loved. She always needed more time. Life was fragile and unpredictable, and now, as much as she wished that the loss of Bill were under her control, it wasn't.
Very few things were.
With him she had felt highs and lows of emotion that she had rarely let herself feel since the death of her father and sisters. She'd spent a lot of time and gone through a lot of bottles to try and numb those down, to keep herself steady. Maybe she should stop fighting so hard against all the pain and give herself over to it. Because with that pain, she realized now, also came the potential for ecstasy. For love.
It's what Bill would want. But he would want her to make that decision herself.
Left with only hours to both come to terms with Bill's illness and to ready herself for a last goodbye, she now felt broken. Not irreparably broken-not the wailing, self-pitying kind of broken. This was not how Laura ever broke, for she'd broken before. More like someone had hit a homerun through her stained-glass window. Colors everywhere.
She would mourn, gather up the pieces, and move on, but always remember that beauty.
The smell of the cafeteria made her gag and served to quell her growling stomach. She returned to Bill's room in the MICU and Lee stood up, squeezing his father's hand as he rose.
"I'm sorry, I didn't mean to-"
"It's all right." Lee walked over to her and gave her a hug. Unexpected, though welcome, she let him embrace her and tried to maintain her composure. "Take care of him for me," Lee whispered in her ear.
Nodding, she let go of Bill's son and watched the door click quietly shut behind him.
As Laura walked to Bill's bedside, she found herself parsing thoughts in her head, placing them into categories of importance. What mattered now, what didn't. What he needed to hear, what she needed to say.
He didn't look drained, as he had in the past hours. He looked energized, if that was possible. Like he'd somehow found a second wind. "I'm sorry I never told you."
Laura felt a twinge of heartache at this man, with his entire adventurous life behind him, feeling regret over such a thing at such a moment.
"Don't be sorry. About anything."
"A rare reprieve from guilt." He smiled. "I'll take it."
She smiled then, though hers was through tears. "Is there anything you need me to do?"
After a moment of quiet contemplation, he spoke. "Two things."
"Okay."
"Tell me you love me."
She wiped her cheek with the back of her shaking hand. "I did already, on the ship. You didn't hear?"
"One more time."
Her laugh felt misplaced but she couldn't stop it. "I love you."
Bill cupped her hand in his palm and squeezed it. "I love you, too."
Laura tried to hold back the swell of anger over their ill timing. There would be time for that later. She would grieve her losses when he was gone, not now, not while he was still here beside her. "The second thing?"
"In the bag that Ellen brought me you'll find a book. I'd like you to read it to me."
Walking over to the bag on the small table across the room, for the first time Laura was overcome by the depth of Bill's friendship with Ellen. She felt no jealousy or distrust now, merely a sense of envy that the other woman had been given the opportunity to spend so many more years with him. These were adventures she wished they could have, but their adventure had been cut short.
She unzipped his bag, then opened it. The book was easy to find, but it wasn't what caught her eye.
Laura picked up his book and pulled a larger paperback book from between two shirts. As she walked back to his bedside she gritted her teeth to hold back what tears were threatening to come forth.
She placed Bill's scrapbook on his chest. He smiled and traced the paper dolls pasted on front with his fingertips. "You found it."
"We never finished it."
He took her hand in his, so cold. "Maybe next time."
Somewhere in her heart she knew what he meant and that peace stilled the pain swelling within her.
Laura opened the old leather-bound book in her lap and a wrapped condom dropped out. "Always prepared, huh?"
His laugh became a cough, which slowly settled. "Rather be doing that."
She slipped it in her pocket before anyone could see. "Me too."
Turning to the title page, she hesitated, then looked up at him.
"'The Old Man and the Sea,'" she whispered. "How fitting."
"I'm near the end."
"I see."
"I never finished. I wasn't ready for it to end."
"Are you ready now?"
He reached up and touched her face. "Yes."
Laura brushed her lips across his fingers, placing his hand at rest on his chest. Settling into the chair by his side, she swallowed the lump in her throat. She opened to the worn leather bookmark, just a few pages from the end, and began to read.
"'He no longer dreamed of storms, nor of women, nor of great occurrences, nor of great fish, nor fights, nor contests of strength, nor of his wife. He only dreamed of places now and of the lions on the beach. They played like young cats in the dusk and he loved them as he loved the boy.'"
Shallow breaths were all she could hear. She recalled, and regretted, how afraid she was to look at her mother in her last moments. Glancing at him, he looked peaceful, finally at peace, his eyes closed. She continued on, more hurried now, a race to the end.
The last words she had memorized; this book she had loved when young and had read dozens of times, though not in the recent past. Softly reciting them, she raised her eyes to find no evidence of breath, no register of heartbeat.
She left one last message against his forehead, hoping he would somehow hear it.
"Sleep well old man."
THE END
Authors: icedteainthebag and wishflsinfl
Characters/pairings: Adama/Roslin, Kara/Lee, Gaius/Caprica, other assorted affairs, ensemble cast
Rating: MA (graphic sex)
Warnings: AU, Character death
Spoilers: through Daybreak
Summary: As the new bartender on the cruise ship Galactica Bill Adama is hoping for an uneventful first voyage, but his life is irrevocably changed when he meets cruise director Laura Roslin.
A/N: Thanks to everyone who read this story, as crazy as it was, and especially to those who left comments convincing us we weren't (completely) crazy. Thank you to fragrantwoods and somadanne for their invaluable beta assistance. Also thanks to the folks at bsg_checkin for cheerleading.
Chapters: One | Two | Three | Four | Five | Six | Seven | Eight | Nine | Ten | Eleven
*
The helicopter ride to the hospital was a blur for Laura. Too much was happening too quickly; she was still reeling from Cottle's revelation. She barely heard the clamor both times Bill stopped breathing-the shouting, Lee's concern, medical terms and phrases Laura didn't, and didn't want to, understand. All she wanted to hear was his voice.
She ached to touch him, and finally, in the last few minutes before they landed on the mainland, there was a stillness in which she was able to hold his hand.
They'd never held hands before and she didn't let go until someone pulled her hand away.
She thought she must be in shock, drunk on pain, a pain so deep she couldn't feel it--but she knew it was there. Her head light, she followed the medics and Bill, on a gurney, into the hospital. The lights were too bright for eyes so dry.
She was stopped at the entrance to the treatment rooms by someone who kept repeating the same words, trying to get a response.
"Are you immediate family?"
Laura bit down on her lip, tasting a tinge of blood. She felt a hand on her back.
"She's his wife."
She looked over at Cottle, who was glaring at the nurse. "Let's go," he said more gently, taking her arm.
*
Lee paced nervously in the hallway of the ER. Cancer. Was that was his father wanted to talk to him about?
Suddenly all of the things they'd argued about over the years seemed so petty and unimportant. So much lost time …
Lee wiped the tears from his eyes and sniffled, feeling like a child again. He was surprised at the touch of a hand on his elbow.
"Are you okay?"
It was Laura. "Oh, yeah, I guess. I mean, obviously not, but …"
"I know." Her voice was as gentle as the touch of her hand on his arm. "It's a lot to process."
"Yeah." He sniffed again, trying to compose himself.
Laura murmured something reassuring and drifted away. Other people were milling around now, starting to arrive from the ship. He spotted the Tighs, the captain's white uniform stained with evidence of the battle.
Time seemed to pass haphazardly. Too fast and then too slow as he waited for word from the doctors. Finally someone came out to tell him that they were moving his father upstairs to the Medical ICU.
A group of people in hospital garb emerged through the swinging doors, flanking a stretcher. Lee could only see his dad's head. There was an oxygen tube placed below his nose but he was breathing on his own. That was a good sign, he knew.
He was about to follow the stretcher upstairs with Laura when he spotted Kara racing through the halls. She hit him at a dead run, throwing her arms around him and knocking him back several steps.
"I got here as fast as I could," she said, sobbing.
Holding her close, he buried his face in her hair. She smelled like the ocean.
*
Ellen hated hospitals. It was a cliché, she knew, but when you'd died in as many of them as she had, it was a well-earned hatred.
She and Saul found Doc Cottle near the elevator, looking grave.
"Just a matter of time now," he said.
Saul squeezed Ellen's hand. "Does he know?"
"I gave him the short version but I think he knew already. He's been in and out of consciousness."
"I just need a few minutes with him," Ellen said. "I need to say goodbye."
The same nurse who stopped Laura earlier eyed Ellen and Cottle as they approached her.
"Younger sister," Cottle said.
With a roll of her eyes, the nurse issued Ellen a visitor's pass for the MICU.
"You flatter me," Ellen whispered as they rode the elevator up four floors.
The MICU pod was small and circular, allowing Ellen to see into Bill's room as she stepped off the elevator. Laura Roslin was in there with him, sitting next to his bed, all tragedy and lost hope.
Ellen steeled herself for her task and strode into the room like she owned it. "You weren't kidding about going out with a bang."
Bill's eyes fluttered open at the sound of her voice. They looked unfocused. His breathing was shallow and slow. But he managed to raise his hand off the bed a few inches as recognition set in. She set the bag she'd brought him on the chair and took his outstretched fingers in hers and was startled by how cold they were. His fingernails were blue around the edges. Probably the morphine slowing down his circulation.
Standing on the opposite side of the bed, Ellen avoided Laura's teary gaze-the last thing Bill needed was two women crying over him. Again. Instead, she focused on the man who lay in the bed, the man who'd sacrificed his life because she'd asked him to.
His lips moved and she had to bend down to hear what he was trying to say.
"-mission?"
She squeezed his hand gently. "You did it, Bill. Defeated the pirates, protected the assets. You really kicked ass out there today. Made us all proud."
She left out the rest … the massive rescue efforts, the dozens of civilian casualties, the summary dismissal of her entire crew, and the loss of Galactica to Davey Jones's Locker. There were some things a dying man didn't need to know.
Laura looked up at her and smiled tearily, obviously grateful for Ellen's discretion.
"How 'bout you?" Bill whispered.
"Me? You know me. I'll be fine. I've got a job lined up on a Russian icebreaker and they've agreed to take on most of the core crew members. We'll be in Vladivostok by daybreak." With new identities. Again. At least the pirates hadn't blown her secret. It wasn't time for the identities of the five to be revealed in this iteration.
Bill nodded almost imperceptibly. "Kotsov. You know …"
"That bastard. Kiev, right?" She tried to keep it light, keep him from wasting too much energy worrying about her. "If I need anything, I'll look him up. Tell him you said to go frak himself, too. How's that?"
With a weak smile, Bill closed his eyes.
Laura had started crying softly. Obviously she was in love with Bill. Seriously, head-over-heels in love with him. Not one to question love at first sight-she'd been with Saul frakking Tigh for how many centuries now-Ellen knew it was time to take her leave.
She bent down and smoothed Bill's hair back. He was burning up. He'd be lucky to last the night. Pressing a kiss to his forehead, she fought hard against the sob that was threatening to break through her icy captain's demeanor. "Go with the Gods, Bill."
Before he could respond, she turned and fled the room. She didn't want him to see her cry.
Saul was there waiting for her when the elevator opened on the ground floor and she crumpled in his arms, muffling her sobs against the heavy wool of his pea coat.
*
Laura had taken a break from her vigil, leaving Lee to speak what might be his final words with his father while she roamed sterile halls. She didn't want to wait too long before she returned, but knew that Lee deserved to give his father his last respects.
She hadn't given herself time to cope with the idea that Bill had cancer, that he was dying. It seemed to be happening so quickly even though she knew it had probably been happening for years, for plenty of time before she knew him. He'd had time to prepare for this moment, and knowing Bill-as little as she did-he had probably spent ample time preparing.
She was a planner and this was not in her plan. None of it had been-meeting him, falling in love, all the shit that happened afterward.
It seemed that death liked the sneak attack. Every time she encountered it in her life it was by surprise, within an instant taking away the ones she loved. She always needed more time. Life was fragile and unpredictable, and now, as much as she wished that the loss of Bill were under her control, it wasn't.
Very few things were.
With him she had felt highs and lows of emotion that she had rarely let herself feel since the death of her father and sisters. She'd spent a lot of time and gone through a lot of bottles to try and numb those down, to keep herself steady. Maybe she should stop fighting so hard against all the pain and give herself over to it. Because with that pain, she realized now, also came the potential for ecstasy. For love.
It's what Bill would want. But he would want her to make that decision herself.
Left with only hours to both come to terms with Bill's illness and to ready herself for a last goodbye, she now felt broken. Not irreparably broken-not the wailing, self-pitying kind of broken. This was not how Laura ever broke, for she'd broken before. More like someone had hit a homerun through her stained-glass window. Colors everywhere.
She would mourn, gather up the pieces, and move on, but always remember that beauty.
The smell of the cafeteria made her gag and served to quell her growling stomach. She returned to Bill's room in the MICU and Lee stood up, squeezing his father's hand as he rose.
"I'm sorry, I didn't mean to-"
"It's all right." Lee walked over to her and gave her a hug. Unexpected, though welcome, she let him embrace her and tried to maintain her composure. "Take care of him for me," Lee whispered in her ear.
Nodding, she let go of Bill's son and watched the door click quietly shut behind him.
As Laura walked to Bill's bedside, she found herself parsing thoughts in her head, placing them into categories of importance. What mattered now, what didn't. What he needed to hear, what she needed to say.
He didn't look drained, as he had in the past hours. He looked energized, if that was possible. Like he'd somehow found a second wind. "I'm sorry I never told you."
Laura felt a twinge of heartache at this man, with his entire adventurous life behind him, feeling regret over such a thing at such a moment.
"Don't be sorry. About anything."
"A rare reprieve from guilt." He smiled. "I'll take it."
She smiled then, though hers was through tears. "Is there anything you need me to do?"
After a moment of quiet contemplation, he spoke. "Two things."
"Okay."
"Tell me you love me."
She wiped her cheek with the back of her shaking hand. "I did already, on the ship. You didn't hear?"
"One more time."
Her laugh felt misplaced but she couldn't stop it. "I love you."
Bill cupped her hand in his palm and squeezed it. "I love you, too."
Laura tried to hold back the swell of anger over their ill timing. There would be time for that later. She would grieve her losses when he was gone, not now, not while he was still here beside her. "The second thing?"
"In the bag that Ellen brought me you'll find a book. I'd like you to read it to me."
Walking over to the bag on the small table across the room, for the first time Laura was overcome by the depth of Bill's friendship with Ellen. She felt no jealousy or distrust now, merely a sense of envy that the other woman had been given the opportunity to spend so many more years with him. These were adventures she wished they could have, but their adventure had been cut short.
She unzipped his bag, then opened it. The book was easy to find, but it wasn't what caught her eye.
Laura picked up his book and pulled a larger paperback book from between two shirts. As she walked back to his bedside she gritted her teeth to hold back what tears were threatening to come forth.
She placed Bill's scrapbook on his chest. He smiled and traced the paper dolls pasted on front with his fingertips. "You found it."
"We never finished it."
He took her hand in his, so cold. "Maybe next time."
Somewhere in her heart she knew what he meant and that peace stilled the pain swelling within her.
Laura opened the old leather-bound book in her lap and a wrapped condom dropped out. "Always prepared, huh?"
His laugh became a cough, which slowly settled. "Rather be doing that."
She slipped it in her pocket before anyone could see. "Me too."
Turning to the title page, she hesitated, then looked up at him.
"'The Old Man and the Sea,'" she whispered. "How fitting."
"I'm near the end."
"I see."
"I never finished. I wasn't ready for it to end."
"Are you ready now?"
He reached up and touched her face. "Yes."
Laura brushed her lips across his fingers, placing his hand at rest on his chest. Settling into the chair by his side, she swallowed the lump in her throat. She opened to the worn leather bookmark, just a few pages from the end, and began to read.
"'He no longer dreamed of storms, nor of women, nor of great occurrences, nor of great fish, nor fights, nor contests of strength, nor of his wife. He only dreamed of places now and of the lions on the beach. They played like young cats in the dusk and he loved them as he loved the boy.'"
Shallow breaths were all she could hear. She recalled, and regretted, how afraid she was to look at her mother in her last moments. Glancing at him, he looked peaceful, finally at peace, his eyes closed. She continued on, more hurried now, a race to the end.
The last words she had memorized; this book she had loved when young and had read dozens of times, though not in the recent past. Softly reciting them, she raised her eyes to find no evidence of breath, no register of heartbeat.
She left one last message against his forehead, hoping he would somehow hear it.
"Sleep well old man."
THE END